Trying Short Quotes

#1. Future historians trying to determine what it was like to be alive in fin de millennium America should read the last two decades of O. Henry and Best American short-story collections.

Gary Krist

#2. I always try to approach things from the point of authenticity. I've done that for my short films, working with non-actors from the real environments where you go exploring and placing them into the cast alongside professional actors.

Tom Green

#3. Writers' communities are very helpful to writers because it gives them a way to try out their stuff short of publication.

Robert Munsch

#4. I always say, I'm a woman, I can't change my sex. I can't get angry about it. I'm too busy desperately trying to get my movies made. It's hard work. There are no short cuts. If there were, I would have found them by now.

Ruba Nadda

#5. The pain of reaching your goal will only last a short while
The pain of not trying, will last a lifetime

Steven Aitchison

#6. In all honesty, at that time, I never saw myself as an author ... I was just a Mom in a state of panic, trying to enter a short story contest to win the prize money in order to keep the lights on in my home.

Leslie Banks

#7. O World, try to deceive someone else. Are you trying to tempt me or attract me? No way! I divorce you irrevocably. Your time is short and you are insignificant. Alas! The provision is little, the journey is long and the way is lonely.

Ali Ibn Abi Talib

#8. Writing the short story is essentially an act of grace. It's not a matter of will so much as trust. I try to let the story do some of the work for me. It knows what it wants to do, say, be. I try not to stand in its way.

Paulette Alden

#9. What keeps the so-called consumer society going is the fact that trying to find yourself through things doesn't work. The ego satisfaction is short-lived and so you keep looking for more and keep buying and consuming.

Eckhart Tolle

#10. To be with the others, you have to have your hair short and wear ties. So we're trying to make a third world happen, you know what I mean?

Jimi Hendrix

#11. Sometimes I try my hand at turning out small profundities and uncertain short stories, but I always end up with just one single word: God.

Etty Hillesum

#12. Life is a short affair; We should try to make it smooth, and free from strife.

Euripides

#13. We are all human and fall short of where we need to be. We must never stop trying to be the best we can be.

Richard Adams

#14. When you explain to people what you're trying to do, as opposed to just making demands or delegating tasks, you can build instant trust, even if it's just for that short time you're on the phone.

Simon Sinek

#15. Try and write straight English; never using slang except in dialogue and then only when unavoidable. Because all slang goes sour in a short time. I only use swear words, for example, that have lasted at least a thousand years for fear of getting stuff that will be simply timely and then go sour.

Ernest Hemingway,

#16. George Carlin is kind of my template now because George Carlin before was straight laced regular comic and he had short hair, a tie, suit, nightclub guy. Then he said screw it, let his hair grow, just started telling what he thought was the truth. So that's what I'm trying to do.

Drew Carey

#17. Without asking her permission, someone is trying to intrude her life, draw her attention, in short, to bother her.

Milan Kundera

#18. There's nothing wrong with having your goals really high and trying to achieve them. That's the fun part. You may come up short. I've come up short on a lot on my goals, but it's always fun to try and achieve them.

Tiger Woods

#19. Optimists, by contrast, look for specific, limited, short-term explanations for bad events, and as a result, in the face of a setback, they're more likely to pick themselves up and try again.

Paul Tough

#20. I'm trying to be a better man, Liz. Are you watching?

Sophia Rose

#21. Life is short, very short, and what are we doing here if not trying to become more generous and loving?

George Saunders

#22. Without trying to clear up the degree of correctness of a qualification which no one, one must hope, will be asked to understand exactly, I will limit myself to a few words of explanation to cut short any misunderstandings.

Gustave Courbet

#23. The only way, I think, to learn to write short stories is to write them, and then try to discover what you have done.

Flannery O'Connor

#24. Life is too short to spend your precious time trying to convince a person who wants to live in gloom and doom otherwise. Give lifting that person your best shot, but don't hang around long enough for his/her bad attitude to pull you down. Instead, surround yourself with optimistic people.

Zig Ziglar

#25. It is hard to try and find a rhythm when you're only out there for short spurts, but it's fine,

Eddy Curry

#26. I'm actually writing a short story about a photographer who went completely insane trying to take a close up photo of the horizon.

Steven Wright

#27. Life is very short, try everything you've dreamed about (within the perimeters of sanity and the law) and regret nothing. Oh, and don't forget the sunscreen.

Amber Benson

#28. I stopped writing short fiction early on - I was never really good at it, and I never liked the results. So I stopped trying to fit the material I was working with into these tidy little short fiction packages.

Susan Choi

#29. A dam doesn't try to reason with the water. Its main purpose is to hold it still for a while. When I lecture my kids I'm doing much the same thing. I'm not trying to necessarily reason with them, just hold them still for a short while.

Spuds Crawford

#30. The South Vietnamese were perhaps a little bit slow in doing things, they jump on, on the problem and they try to do themselves everything. Or, they try to have some short cuts with the, those people they were dealing with.

Bui Diem

#31. There is a sort of genre of optimistic science fiction that I like, and I don't think there is enough of. One of my favourites is a short story by Arthur C. Clarke, 'The City and the Stars.' It's set in this far future on Earth in this somewhat static society and trying to break out.

Peter Thiel

#32. Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid. In the past, whenever I had fallen short in almost any undertaking, it was seldom because I had tried and failed. It was because I had let fear of failure stop me from trying at all.

Arthur Gordon Webster

#33. The halfling was still standing, trying to straighten his dishevelled hat and fix the broken orange feather. "You know," he said nonchalantly, "sometimes is not so bad to be short." Luthien

R.A. Salvatore

#34. Whether I'm trying to figure out what the U.S. military is doing in Latin America or Africa, Afghanistan or Qatar, the response is remarkably uniform - obstruction and obfuscation, hurdles and hindrances. In short, the good old-fashioned military runaround.

Nick Turse

#35. Failing sucks. But it's better than the alternative."
"Which is?"
"Not even trying." Now he did look at me, straight on. "Life's short, you know?

Sarah Dessen

#36. I respect BMW for not interfering in these projects. They're just trying to support short films with their brand, which I think is great.

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

#37. In fact, novelty lovers may do better with a series of short-term activities - thirty-day challenges, for instances - instead of trying to create an enduring, automatic habit.

Gretchen Rubin

#38. Life's too short to spend time trying to explain the obvious to an idiot.

Gloria Naylor

#39. I think a part of the reason that those early plays were short was that I just kept having these ideas, and I'd just go off and write them. I wasn't trying to write one-act plays - it's just how the ideas would be expressed. Every condition I was in seemed like it could be a play.

Sam Shepard

#40. His eyes widened and he sucked in a small portion of his bottom lip as if trying to control his temper which she had no doubt was brutally savage. He didn't back off, only let out a short puff of air.
"Oh, I'm good with brats. I've broken dozens of them.

Madison Thorne Grey

#41. Everything that I have done has always been predicated on doing the best that I can with the ability that God has given me, trying to reach as far as I possibly can. And if I fall a little bit short, then I'm still farther ahead than if I hadn't reached at all.

Don Shula

#42. Short stories and some short novels are close to poetry
with the fewest words they capture the essence of a situation, of a human being. It's like trying to pin down the eternal moment.

Gina Berriault

#43. We all lose sometimes. We fail to get what we want. Friends and loved ones leave. We make a decision we regret. We try our hardest and come up short. It's not the losing that defines us. It's how we lose. It's what we do afterward.

Scott Jurek

#44. It wasn't the greatest bargain I'd ever made, but I didn't see a lot of alternatives, short of moving into Charlie's bedroom or trying to convince John to move to Belize.

Melissa F. Olson

#45. IN trying to recall my impressions during my short war duty as an officer in the Austrian Army, I find that my recollections of this period are very uneven and confused.

Fritz Kreisler

#46. Government policies try to prevent the emergence of serious unemployment by credit expansion, i.e., inflation. The outcome was rising prices, renewed demands for higher wages and reiterated credit expansion; in short, protracted inflation.

Ludwig Von Mises

#47. I was frustrated because I couldn't get going, as I was trying to figure out how to make films. I had various jobs, I taught a SAT class, I was a bartender, I had a day job at an office and was making short films.

David O. Russell

#48. I do want to direct, eventually. I don't know if it will be a short film or a music video or a feature, but I know that I want to at least try it and see.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead

#49. The nearest friends can go With anyone to death, comes so far short They might as well not try to go at all.

Robert Frost

#50. Sometimes men present a swagger that suggests a prowess, whether it's sexual or financial. L.A. seems to be a place where trying too hard is almost a given. Some people are unapologetic about how blatantly they represent who they are through what they wear or drive. Subtlety is in short supply.

Michael C. Hall

#51. Life is short if you don't notice it'll pass you by,
That's why my head is in the clouds trying to pass the sky.

Ludacris

#52. I was panting slightly, thanks to trying to keep up with him. Stupid short legs.

Rachel Hawkins

#53. I'm trying to grow more limbs in order to multitask at a greater rate and I'm also investigating the possibilities of cloning. Because nothing would be more useful than having multiples of me, and that way, I could do all of the things I'd like to do in the short amount of time we all have here.

Ezra Miller

#54. The only way to win tournaments is with the short game. Over half your shots out here are within 30 or 40 yards. Ballstriking is where I'm trying to improve, yes, but more to eliminate big numbers than make birdies.

Phil Mickelson

#55. Paradoxically, what keeps the so-called consumer society going is the fact that trying to find yourself through things doesn't work: The ego satisfaction is short-lived and so you keep looking for more, keep buying, keep consuming.

Eckhart Tolle

#56. I'd like to think I've left something in the world. Without in any way trying to be morbid, but life is very short, and I'd like to think I'd leave some body of work that would inspire other musicians long after I've gone.

Paul Weller

#57. I've learned that by returning my calls between 11:00 a.m. and noon and 4:00 and 5:00 p.m. I can keep them short and to the point because people are either hungry and starting to think about lunch or they are trying to gear down at the end of the day.

Geri Larkin

#58. I don't know whether we will find ourselves in the cross hairs, pulled by the short hairs, or just trying to find the next inane hairstyle. But change is coming; it is inevitable. It is as steady and reliable as a ticking clock.

Corey Taylor

#59. In short, the best thing to do is behave in a manner befitting one's age. If you are sixteen or under, try not to go bald.

Woody Allen

#60. For a sampler, you could try my short story collection "Wireless". Which contains one novella that scooped a Locus award, and one that won a Hugo, and covers a range of different styles.

Charles Stross

#61. Sponsorships and marketing are oftentimes pretty short-lived. From a company's standpoint, they're often not looking to do tremendously long contracts. They're always trying to catch the next big thing.

Tim Howard

#62. It took only seconds for me to make these discoveries, but even in that short time, my stomach nearly jumped through my mouth trying to reach the food.

Stephenie Meyer

#63. I am far more interested in being a beginner than in trying to become an expert. Life is difficult and complicated for everyone - but it's very, very short.

Alastair Humphreys

#64. I guess my view of life is that you live your life and it's short. The thing is to have as rich an experience as you possibly can.
That's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to do something creative. I try to educate people.

Michio Kaku

#65. The problem is so severe that trying to say, "First we'll fix the government and then we'll tackle climate change," or, "First we have to figure out alternative systems to capitalism and then we'll tackle climate change," I don't see how those things are possible in the very short term.

Margaret D. Klein

#66. Do not try to make your headline so short that it fails to express your idea properly. It's more important to say what you want to say - even if it takes 20 words to do than make it short and fail to express your idea.

John Caples

#67. If you give me a short shot I will attack you. I'm not a baseliner who rallies. I try to get the point over with.

Venus Williams

#68. The brightest minds in our field have been trying to find a definition of science fiction for these past seventy years. The short answer is, science fiction stories are given as possible, not necessarily here and now, but somewhere, sometime.

Larry Niven

#69. My short stories have always pushed twenty pages. That's no length for a short story to be. You either do them short like Carver or you stop trying.

Zadie Smith

#70. Every poem I write falls short in some important way. But I go on trying to write the one that won't.

Dorianne Laux

#71. I know she's just trying to protect me, just as I was to protect myself a few short weeks ago, but her words make me aware that the heart in my chest is a muscles like any other. It can hurt.

Nicola Yoon

#72. When I first moved to New York I had been trying to work on anything and everything I could. From extra work and commercials to short and student films so I could learn in front of a camera.

Pawel Szajda

#73. Short answers seem like you don't care even if you are trying to answer. I get the same flack for my short texting.

Rob Zombie

#74. Life is so short. Why waste a single day of it doing something that doesn't matter, that doesn't try to do something big?

Dean Kamen

#75. When you're leading, you're generally trying to lead change, and I think it was Roy Amara, who said about technology, "We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run." And I think the same applies to change within an organization.

Harry West

#76. In short, I am amenable to criticism, but only within the sphere of what I am trying to do; I will not pretend to do otherwise.

Flannery O'Connor

#77. If you desire truly to live you will cease trying to find magic tricks and short-cuts to life and learn the simple laws of being, and order your life in conformity with these. Realign your life with the laws of nature - this and this alone constitutes living to live.

Herbert M. Shelton

#78. I started trying to be a writer and failed for years. I tried novels, short stories, sitcoms, movies, plays, anything. And then, to support myself, I had millions of jobs on the fringes of show business.

Bruce Eric Kaplan

#79. And I've been trying everything I can think of since to make up for it - short of tattooing her name on my ass and streaking across Yankee Stadium.
I was saving that for next week.

Emma Chase

#80. You'll live your life a lot happier if you stop trying to be perfect. Do your best for Jesus. When you fall short, He'll carry you.

Karen Kingsbury

#81. The hardest thing in golf is trying to two-putt when you have to, because your brain isn't wired that way. You're accustomed to trying to make putts, and when you change that mind-set, your brain short-circuits, especially under pressure.

Ken Venturi

#82. Science sometimes falls short when trying to fathom the depths of our essence - and our inspiration comes from that essence.

Lance Secretan

#83. In some cases, she was actively trying not to make friends, though she usually stopped short of being rude. (Uptight, tense, and mildly misanthropic? Yes. Rude? No.)

Rainbow Rowell

#84. Not that anyone short of God Almighty could have gotten Marcus Senior to rest and take it easy. It was like trying to make a shark sit up and beg for treats.

Deborah Blake

#85. It's a distillation of all I know about writing: short-story writing, screenwriting, journalism - everything. There is no future in the novel, so far as I can see. I'm trying to show where writing is going to be. I may not get there, but I will point the way." In

Gerald Clarke

#86. It's very hard sometimes when you can't crack something or can't solve something and you keep trying and trying and you know it's falling a little bit short. That's very hard, but then when you finally do it, it's very rewarding and the process is good too, I like working with people this way.

Steve Martin

#87. I'm a southern girl from Arkansas and I am just tryin to do my thing in the business. To make a long story short I'm just trying to be successful at what I do and work hard.

Kiley Dean

#88. Many critics, when trying to praise a short-story collection, will say that it has the heft and scope of a good novel. But for me, one of the highest compliments you can pay a novel is to say that it has the rich texture and eloquent detail of a good story collection.

Gary Krist

#89. What to do when the market goes down? Read the opinions of the investment gurus who are quoted in the WSJ. And, as you read, laugh. We all know that the pundits can't predict short-term market movements. Yet there they are, desperately trying to sound intelligent when they really haven't got a clue.

Jonathan Clements

#90. [Jorge Luis Borges] had short stories, and I was trying to learn how to write short stories, and then he had these things in the middle that were like fables, and I loved hearing fables.

Sandra Cisneros

#91. Milton Hope led the singing of Happy Birthday ... He would say, 'Keep it sweet and short and don't try to be funny.'

Bob Hope

#92. When I started using the extreme short depth of field and single point of focus, I was trying to replicate my changing eyesight. We have binocular vision; one eye perceives space from the other. I don't experience a scene visually at F32. It's more like F1.4.

Keith Carter

#93. We are trying to evoke and reinforce meanings from the spaces we cover and the times we're given. Short or long this becomes our purpose. What we artists do is important stuff.

Robert Genn

#94. Most people can learn a lot more than they think they can. They sell themselves short without trying.

Elon Musk

#95. Life's too short to spend it trying to keep others happy. You can't please everyone. To fulfill your destiny, stay true to your heart.

Joel Osteen

#96. My favorite caricaturist is Al Hirschfeld. I'm always trying to give my caricatures that streamlined quality - and I often fall short.

Steve Breen

#97. In trying to teach children a great deal in a short time, they are treated not as though the race they were to run was for life, but simply a three-mile heat.

Horace Mann

#98. Travis sighed. "I just said that because," he scratched his short hair nervously, "I don't want to ruin anything, Pigeon. I wouldn't even know how to go about being who you deserve. I was just trying to get it worked out in my head.

Jamie McGuire

#99. She had short curls and her face had so many wrinkles it looked as if someone had been trying to draw her for a very long time and every line put in had made the face more like her.

L.M. Boston

#100. I can look at my early work and see what a pained struggle it was to draw what I was drawing. I was trying so hard to get this specific look that was in my head, and always falling short.

Daniel Clowes